Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 343 Banned from Dancing for 80 Years

When Ronald returned home, he didn't feel much sleepy yet, so he simply took out the script of "Footloose" and started to read it.

The original author, Dean Pitchford, wrote a writing story attached to the front of the screenplay.

The screenwriter Pitchford is worthy of being a high-achieving student who graduated from Yale, and he explained the ins and outs of the script creation clearly in a few words.

In 80, Pitchford saw a piece of news that dances had been banned in the small town of Elmore, Oklahoma, since [-]. No dance was held.

The last senior in high school to challenge and overturn the law, Elmore Public High held its first senior prom during the senior season of 11.

The whole movie is adapted from reality. The three protagonists, Lun who proposes to abolish the legal ban, Ariel, the pastor's daughter who upholds the ban, and Ariel's best friend Rusty, all have character prototypes.

Pitchford himself was a lyricist, and he also wrote the words for all the envisioned episodes in the film, which he attached to the script.

For example, the opening is an episode of the same name "Footloose", the lyrics at the beginning are
Footloose, Footloose, kick off your weekend leather shoes.

Please, Louise, help me take my boots off.

The lyrics are very rhyming and rhythmic.The Footloose title actually has a double meaning.

On the one hand, Footloose is a description of rhythmic footsteps, which refers to the rhythm of dance.On the other hand, it said that the footsteps were loosened and the ban on dancing was abolished.

Ronald admired the literary quality in the lyrics of Yale's top students.

However, it seems that Pitchford has never made a movie. Many places in the script are not standardized enough, and some plots cannot be filmed as they are, and must be reworked.

For example, Ronald obviously felt that there was a plot that could not be considered as a script, and he planned to start revising from this section first.

The male protagonist, Lun, who was transferred from the big city of Chicago, had conflicts with Ariel's boyfriend, and the two met to have a cowardly duel with a tractor.

The two drove their tractors towards each other, and whoever got scared and swerved before colliding with each other in the end lost.

"Len's shoe was accidentally stuck in the clutch. He tried to jump out of the car, but failed. Ariel's boyfriend, Chuck, saw Lun trying to escape, and triumphantly stepped on the gas pedal to keep going. With no way out, Lun had to Also stepped on the gas pedal, which scared Chuck into jumping out of the car instead."

The score here is divided into many scenes that can be filmed, and Ronald began to design the scheme of the whole scene.The words on the script had to be able to be filmed.How do you take a close-up shot of a stuck clutch?How was trying to jump out of a car?

The audience needs to understand why Lun can't jump off the car. Ronald thought for a while here, and picked up a pen to get the shoe stuck, and changed it to the shoelace being entangled.In this way, when lifting the foot to jump the car, you can get close to a close-up of the shoelace being entangled by the clutch, and the audience can also understand why the protagonist Lun can't jump.

As for the emotional description of "smugly", it is acceptable to open your eyes and close your eyes. When the time comes, the director will give guidance on the spot and the actors will just play.

After writing for about half an hour, Ronald began to feel sleepy.First went to Paramount today, then went to Beverly Hills, and sent Demi to the hospital after returning home. Ronald couldn't open his eyes.

"Take a break, and write tomorrow." Ronald struggled to get up, walked to the bed and lay down, and pulled a blanket to cover it.

"Boom chacha, boom chacha...boom chacha, boom chacha." There was a burst of drum beating, and Ronald seemed to see a picture with a dark background appearing in front of him.

There is no detailed background, no faces of any characters, only close-ups of two feet dancing to the rhythm.

Men's feet, women's feet, feet in high-heeled sandals, feet in leather shoes, feet in boots, feet in dirty sneakers, and two feet in leg warmers.

A background voice sings upbeat lyrics

Footloose, Footloose, kick off your weekend leather shoes.

Please, Louise, help me take my boots off.

"This editing is not bad." Ronald understood that he had dreamed of "full body strength".

The opening dance ended with the interlude, and the picture went dark, then lit up again.

A middle-aged pastor, preaching in the church.

"God could have wiped this evil from the face of the earth with one wave of his great hand. But instead of that, he has devised a test for us, a test!

If not for this test, how do you explain the current popularity of wicked, obscene, depraved rock music? "

Among the sermon-listening crowd below, a boy covered his face with his hands.

"This is probably the male protagonist Lun who transferred from another school." Ronald guessed that the director's technique was good. Conservative preaching.

Coupled with the disdain of Lun, a white guy who transferred from the big city of Chicago, the dramatic conflict at the beginning came out.

But Ronald was too tired today, and started to sleep again.

"Ah..." After an unknown amount of time, a girl driving a car screamed on the screen.

"Ah..." Then the man driving in another car parallel to the side screamed.

"Beep..." A siren sounded, and the camera cut to the big truck on the opposite side.

It turned out that there was a girl standing in the middle of two cars, with her feet on the doors of the two cars, as if doing stunts.She didn't care that the men and women in the two cars were screaming for her to get off, but she laughed maniacally and continued to stand to welcome the big car on the opposite side.

The boy driving the pickup seems to be the girl's boyfriend.The other three girls in the opposite car are her girlfriends.

A girl with a big nose sitting in the back seat slammed on the car door desperately to tell the girl doing acrobatics to get down quickly. "

"Chuck, watch out. Ariel, Ariel... come back, there's a truck ahead," she yelled desperately.

"This is probably Rusty, the best friend of the protagonist Ariel. With such a big hump nose, she must be a Jew. So ugly to act in a movie?" Ronald thought to himself, and gave her a shot just in the nick of time.

"Ahahaha..." The camera cuts to the girl stepping on two car doors and bravely facing the big truck.

"what!"

Ronald realized he knew this girl, wasn't it the same cellist, Lori Singer, from the TV version of "Fame" at Helen Slater's last party?
"Is she the heroine of this movie?" Ronald was a little puzzled. There are only some dancing scenes in this movie script, and there is no cello performance?Why choose her?Maybe it's the father's relationship?
Ronald has read the script and knows that Ariel is the protagonist, so he is not very worried that something will happen to her.However, the camera editing of this episode is very good. The audience who watched it for the first time will probably be brought into the mood of worrying about the girl.

In the nick of time, Lori Singer's Ariel gets into her boyfriend Chuck's car and narrowly avoids the truck, which is parked on the side of the road.The girl on the other side drove the car into a ditch.

"Well," Ronald fell asleep again.

"Woo... woo..." After an unknown amount of time, the sound of two engines starting woke up Ronald again.

On the two tractors, on one side is the protagonist Lun, and on the other side is Ariel's boyfriend Chuck. The two honked the loudspeaker on the tape recorder, and with the accompaniment of music, they drove the tractors to confront each other.

Len tried to run away several times, but was unable to jump out of the car because his shoelaces got tangled in the clutch pedal.In the end, it was Chuck who was forced to turn the steering wheel, and the tractor drove into the ditch next to it, and he fell into it.

"The editing of this segment is not very good." Ronald thought to himself, "It's a bit too cumbersome, as if the audience will not understand the tense state that Lun can't escape, with close-ups of the clutch pedal, shoelaces, and Lun's flustered expression. Cut back and forth several times."

"Why is there such a big difference in the level of editing before and after?" Ronald didn't quite understand. "At the beginning, the close-up dance of various shoes was very creative. Later, the thrilling shot of driving and facing the big truck was also very creative. It's okay, but this clip of the tractor showdown seems to be taken down a notch."

The feeling of sleepiness kept coming, and Ronald was woken up again in a daze.

"Hey hey...why are you standing there? I heard it's a party, let's dance!"

In a gown, Len bursts into a dressed-up prom of streamers and stickers.

"Aooooooooo..." men and women began to shout along with the strong rhythm of the theme song "Footloose".

Couples of boys and girls, still inviting each other, burst onto the dance floor and began dancing a mix of disco moves and old-fashioned swing moves.

The boyfriend of the big-nosed Jewish girl was a goofy big man who made a debut of John Travolta's iconic one-armed side raise in "Saturday Night Fever" that year, which caused another round of cheers from both men and women.

All kinds of shiny powders fell from the sky, the boys lined up, and the girls also lined up, jumping relative to each other.

The camera focused on their shoes again for a close-up. The high-heeled shoes raised shiny powder, and the picture was very delicate.

Ronald curled his lips when he saw it. It looked like an old musical from the 40s and [-]s.In the period dramas of the Civil War or the British aristocracy, there is often this kind of dance form in which men and women are filmed separately and form two rows to invite each other.

How can there be such a dance in modern America?It's all about personal presentation.

The dance form is old, and the dance steps are also a bit old. The disco is also mixed with some old-fashioned tap dance styles, which slaps the floor.

Finally, the two rows of students began to retreat, and the leading actor, Lun, and Rusty's boyfriend began to stand in the middle of the stage and dance solo.It's still the kind of mixed dance steps that combine ancient dances and modern disco, but it's better than the previous ones.

The girls also started to dance solo, flicking their long hair and kicking their thighs, finally showing some professional dance moves.

Then the boys came off the stage one by one, robot dance, noodle dance, and a gymnastic Thomas full spin on the floor.Like the kind of breakdance that black people do like Ronald would do.

"Huh?" Ronald began to feel uncoordinated again. These black break dances appeared in this movie, and they were danced by white people. It was indescribably strange.

These are all dance steps that require systematic training, and they are not very popular now.How could these students who were born in a small town that hadn't danced for 80 years know how to dance?
Fortunately, Rusty's boyfriend's dance steps are relatively immature and clumsy, which fits the character image.Dance silly.The expression on his face is also a bit like Sean Penn in "Fast Tempo", just a goofy high school student.

In the end, Lun took the lead, followed by Ariel and Rusty. The male and female students lined up and jumped towards the camera. The theme song stopped abruptly, and the picture in the dream became a black screen.

Ronald woke up immediately.

He looked out the window, it was not yet dawn.I only slept for a few hours.

Ronald got up, and while his memory was hot, he wrote down a few scenes in his dream, as a director's evaluation, and wrote a large sheet on the filming paper.

"The shots are procrastinated, not suitable for the rhythm of modern audiences in the 80s.

The choreography is faulty, the steps are very corny, and the actors dance either too badly or too well.

The camera is aimed at the shoes for close-up creativity, which is very creative.

The opening narration is smooth and immediately brings the audience into the plot..."

Ronald read it again after he finished writing it, and found it a bit contradictory.

It's a weird movie, in some ways like a very seasoned director who's been making movies for decades.In some places, the filming is very jerky, like myself when filming "fast pace", a fledgling film director.

Also, is this a high-concept or low-concept film?
As far as actors are concerned, none of them are famous, so it should be regarded as the configuration of a high-concept movie.But the plot is not high-concept at all, dancing is not allowed in the town, what age is this?

If he hadn't read the story written by the author Pitchford, Ronald would have thought it was a made-up story.

"Wait..." Ronald suddenly discovered his misunderstanding.

This is indeed a high-concept movie, but it is not for young people like myself who have settled down in big cities, but for tens of millions of small-town youths living in small towns.

They have strong religious and conservative forces, and the people's life is not much different from decades ago.Go to church on weekends to listen to the pastor's sermon, and there are no such new things as disco bars and rock concerts.

For them, dancing those dance steps that are a combination of ancient and modern is a very outrageous behavior.

That's why the director put in some old-school editing.Those young people in small towns, like their hometown in Staten Island, will have to wait a year or two before they can see deviant movies like "ET" and "fast-paced Richmond High School".

What they are familiar with is still the old and slow editing rhythm of the 70s.Maybe some movie theaters are still showing "Singin' in the Rain".

In the end, those black people breakdance, but also give them some dessert, let them open their eyes, right?

(End of this chapter)